Black Promises (Blackwoods College)

He was the sort of man that wouldn’t overlook something like that.

Which meant I was free to speak up if I wanted.

Still, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know how Jarrod would react. Anger, definitely. Defiance, probably. Violence? I didn’t know. The Horsemen never fought with each other—they presented a united front to the school. That was part of their charm: four best friends as tight as could be.

Driving a wedge into that gave me a pathetic, sick pleasure. I didn’t want to take a friendship from Jarrod, but I wasn’t sure Calvin was someone he would want to be close with after all.

When I finished, he let out a long breath and held out a hand.

“Give me your burner.”

I fished it from my bag. He didn’t comment on the wrecked screen.

He shoved it into his pocket.

“What are you doing with that?”

“Destroying it along with my own. If you logged into any services, like Google or Apple or whatever, make sure you delete any logs it saved on your clouds.”

“I can handle that, but I didn’t.”

“Good.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Calvin won’t rat us out, just like he said. He’s strange but he’s loyal.”

“He said something along those lines. What about Addler and Des?”

“He won’t tell them. Addler would probably go to the police out of some insane sense of right and wrong, and Des might do it out of spite or for fun.”

“Des sounds like an asshole.”

“He’s chaos incarnate, that one.” Jarrod rubbed his face and shook his head. “This doesn’t change anything. We move forward.”

I sat across from him, exhausted from riding and staying up late the night before. “What does that even mean?”

“We have an alibi, but nobody else can corroborate it. So unless we can get a third party to speak up, we’re still suspects.”

“Know anyone like that?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t.”

“What do we do?” I leaned forward, head in my hands.

I was hopeless and rotten. When I started all this, I thought I’d kill Dr. Silver and move on with my life—whether that meant serving prison time or drifting along with my days. Either way, I didn’t really care, because there was never an “after” for me, only that single act, and then oblivion.

Except now Jarrod gave me a reason to keep on going, and I didn’t want to disappear anymore.

“I have some ideas, but the big one is, we need to make sure that Silver’s little molestation list gets leaked to the press.”

I looked up at him. “Two questions. How would that help and how the hell would we do it?”

“We want the town to be as sympathetic as possible. If it comes to a trial, I want everyone biased as hell. I want them all to know that he was a sick, sick monster. Might help down the line.”

“Okay, sure, but how does it help now?”

“It’ll cause chaos for the cops. They don’t like this sort of attention, especially press about an ongoing investigation. It’ll make it harder for them to get folks to cooperate, to find other witnesses.”

I nodded slowly. “When people realize they’re not dealing with a nice, friendly, respected chiropractor, they might not want to help.”

“Exactly. It’ll throw a wrench in their gears. There’s a reason why it hasn’t leaked yet.”

“Okay, fine, I can see why it might be useful, but how do we do it?”

“Leave that to me.”

I made a face and groaned. “You’re not breaking more laws for me.”

“I will do my best not to break any more laws.”

“That’s not very convincing.”

“But it’s the best I can do. So you’ll trust me on this?”

I spread my hands. “I don’t know if I have a choice.”

“I guess you don’t.” He grin was cocky and handsome. “Come over here.”

I leaned back and crossed my arms. “What are you going to do to me?”

He stood and walked around the table. I looked up at him as he grabbed my arms and lifted me up. I let out a little shocked gasp as he moved back to his side of the table, sat down, and deposited me into his lap.

He wrapped his massive arms around my body and held me.

At first, I sat there stiffly, uncomfortable and uncertain about what was happening. But slowly, I relaxed into his arms, leaning my head against his chest, and listened to his breaths and his heartbeat. I fell into rhythm with him and felt, strangely, impossibly, safe.

“When did I go from being terrified of you to sitting on you like this?”

He laughed softly. “When were you terrified of me?”

“Basically forever. You’ve always been so harsh to Robyn and I was afraid you’d treat me that way.” I paused, frowning a little. “You never did though. At worst, you ignored me.”

“Robyn got more shit from me than she ever deserved. I owe her a massive apology.”

“You owe her a lot more than that.”